


Now Her Hand is Raised, a Sword to Pierce the Sun

by amells (aeviternal)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Inquisitor Amell (Dragon Age), Inquisitor Amell AU, Memory Loss, Slow Burn, like so slow honestly, rated for amell's pottymouth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-26 22:54:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14412264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeviternal/pseuds/amells
Summary: When the sky tears itself open like something out of an apocalypse prediction, nobody's prepared for it; not the Chantry, not the still-stirring Inquisition, and certainly not the decade-dead Hero of Ferelden, who stumbles out of a rift and doesn't ever really get back up. Life in the Fade is one thing, she finds, but out in the waking world it's quite another.That isn't her only problem, though, because she's carrying part of the Fade around in her hand and everyone seems to have convinced themselves she's an Actual Demon, emphasis on the 'actual', but no one's willing to leave her alone long enough for her to figure out what that even means. Or what any of it means, really, evil Tevinter Magister and rifts in the sky included.But hey ho. What's a magister to an archdemon, really?





	1. if we are mark'd to die

* * *

_The air itself rent asunder,_  
_Spilling light unearthly from the Waters of the Fade,_  
_Opening as an eye to look_  
_Upon the Realm of Opposition_  
_In dire judgment._  
(Canticle of Exaltations, 1:2)

* * *

Here is the bit that she won’t remember for a very long time: when everything tore itself apart, she was singing.

Which— alright, shut up, because yes, her singing voice is awful – terrible, really, and someone used to make fun of her for it, but she doesn’t really remember who – but she hates the silence more than almost anything else. Which is saying a great deal, in truth, because the viridian sky and the floating rocks and the demons really aren’t— they’re not brilliant.

Anyway. Her singing voice is _not the best, my friend, you’d make a very poor bard like that_ but it’s not so bad that it would completely upturn the entire world, you know?

Sometimes she sings the Chant of Light, which she remembers the way a muscle remembers the pain of being pulled taut. More than once, she thinks, she’s even managed to get all the way through it. That’s shocking. That’s— something to be proud of? Too petty to be of interest to those things, those horned, blue monsters with the laughter like— hm. Deep. Like the rumble of the earth under her feet. Anyway. It’s very long, you see, the Chant of Light; most people don’t do that. Can’t. Won’t? Either way, it’s not normal, and she’s managed it, and that’s— yes. Yes, pride. But no, no, no, she wasn’t singing about the _Maker_ this time, no.

A happier song, she thinks. One about roses. Honeysuckle, too, and other flowers, but roses most of all. Red ones, always, though the song never specifies. Red as anything.

She only gets halfway through before something _jerks._ Which, side-note: rude. At least let her finish, demon, before you go fucking about with her shit. _Manners,_ and all that.

The thing jerks her again, though, and she turns, but there’s nothing there. No demon. The last one she saw was— _some_ measure of time ago. A thousand heartbeats or less, she thinks. Not so long ago that the recollection has dulled. It had been spindly and sickening, long and distorted in ways she’s never cared for, has hated for as far back as her memory stretches. These kinds find her the most, she finds; even when she cuts them down like— like a knife in butter, hiss-hot, one second there and the next not, they come back again and again. Like weeds. Like bugs.

No demon. Nothing at all, in fact. Her space – _her_ space, hers, down to the floating chair, to the dead rose-bush under her window – looks the same as it always has, as it always will. Not even a hair, a book, an odd floating rock, has moved. Which might mean that demons are _finally_ getting more creative, she thinks, a possibility that is both a relief and… something she should be terrified of, probably. Something that should make her leap up and out and run far, far away.

It might mean something much worse, though. Change is never good, here. Change takes you in its jaws and chews you up, up, up, little pieces of you caught in its teeth, and then it spits you out and says, _now make it work._

Make it work. Make it work. Make. It. Work.

She’s not very good at that, she doesn’t think. Or, maybe she is. Too good, perhaps. Too much.

At any rate, she does not leap. She does not run. She sits in her floating chair, crosses her legs at the ankles, and summons a cup of something hot and steaming. It can’t be drank, of course, because nothing here can, but she likes how it looks, like comfort, so she sets it down on the desk in front of her – also floating, but several inches higher than the chair is, so she has to lean up to reach it – and waits.

Demons usually aren’t that patient, in her experience. _She’s_ not, but that doesn’t matter, because she’s not-a-demon the way the sky is not-a-sky, a knowledge she trusts, even if she’s unsure of its origin. Anyway, _her_ patience or lack thereof doesn’t matter; she just has to be more patient than it is. Easy as cake. Pie. One of the two. Both?

Surely it’ll come for her, anyway, now she’s sat still. Surely it’ll move. Give her something to fight, something to _do—_ she’s been working on her spells, you know, and she’s figured out how to do this thing where she can grab things and just pin them right down, _stop,_ like flies stuck to something— something _sticky._ She’s been chomping at the bloody bit to try it out on something that actually moves.

It doesn’t, though. Move, that is. Nothing does, nothing at all. Maybe she imagined the whole thing; it wouldn’t be the first time. It had almost felt familiar, anyway, that tug, so maybe she’s just wandered off into her head and not quite stumbled back. That would make sense. She exhales. _That would make sense._

Shame, though. It would be nice to—

* * *

_Slam._ A door, a door, something you walk through, yes, she remembers these, she remembers these very well, the click of a lock, something hot and powerful in her hand, _magical keys don’t work don’t work don’t work,_ and her hand is on fire, her hand is on fucking _fire,_ the world is bright, bright, bright, too hard on her soft, soft skin, and—

Her cheek flares with pain. Instinctively, she reaches for it with a hand – the right, not the left, the left burns as nothing else has ever burned, why does it burn, why does it _burn_ – but finds she can’t, her wrist weighed down by something heavy and cold, tight enough even the fingers of her unharmed hand tingle.

 _“Listen_ to me,” bites out a voice, and she blinks blearily up at— at a woman. Sharp and dark as Fade-stones, her hand raised to strike again, but a woman. Sometimes demons take such forms; Desire came for her as a man, most often, always the same man, though she’s long-since lost the memory of his face, but women came too, later, when she wasn’t swayed.

This is a rather shitty attempt on Desire’s part, really, as attempts go. At least _try_ to tempt her. Honestly.

The air is so cold, _so cold_ , she had forgotten how that felt, how it could get so cold it was hot, and how weird is that? How fucking _mad_ is that? Mad as a bag of cats. Mad as a hatter, a box of frogs. Mad as— as her?

Maybe.

Probably not. Very few things are as mad as her.

“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.” The woman is still talking. She is pacing, circling her like an animal of some sort. There’s probably a joke, there, about Desire and animals and _brutality,_ the kind of joke she doesn’t really remember how to tell. It involved a wiggle of her eyebrows, she thinks, though she isn’t sure—

“ _Tell me_.” So close, her face is very close, but not to kiss or tempt or seduce, instead to snarl and glare and spit. Lots of spitting; her face is dusted in fine flecks of saliva. Which, really, that’s not exactly _sexy,_ Desire, what are you thinki— “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you.”

Funny, that’s funny, that’s a funny fucking thing that the woman’s just said, and yeah, maybe she doesn’t _quite_ remember why, but she’s laughing; doubled over with it, actually, her mouth aching with the effort. She hasn’t laughed in a very long time, and that’s very funny too. It’s all so fucking _funny._ She’d forgotten how laughter sticks in the back of the throat, all syrupy and sticky, how it snaps open the face and cracks the jawbone from the— where does the jawbone connect, she wonders? She doesn’t remember. The cheekbone? Probably the cheekbone.

A hand around her wrist, and she rears back, and it’s _not funny anymore_ because it hurts, it _hurts,_ the demon-woman’s grip is too solid, much too solid, like the press of rock on water, _splash,_ and her shoulder screeches with agony as the angle twists but she doesn’t even _care_ because her hand is _screaming,_ because her hand is actually, quite literally _glowing,_ Fade-green and sickening, and, ah. Ah. That’s new. That’s very, very new.

“Stop struggling,” the woman hisses, “and explain this.”

“I— fucking _shit,_ you really think I _can—”_ Bad idea, bad idea, _don’t communicate with the demons, Apprentice, not unless you want to lose your body_ , but it’s very difficult, really, and what else can she do?

“What does that mean?”

“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know, it’s not like I _put_ it there—”

“You’re _lying.”_

The woman rears in close, that snarl set on her mouth again. She doesn’t even flinch, though, because she’s faced demons with sixteen legs and a hundred-thousand fucking eyes before, and some fake-woman with a scar on her face doesn’t scare her.

“Tell us the truth,” demands the second woman, who has red hair and a soft face, but who looks every bit as mean as the first.

Doesn’t help that she’s visibly shaking with anger, which is a feat, a real one. Maybe Desire isn’t what’s deigned to visit her, this time; maybe she’s been caught by two demons of rage. And isn’t that just the cherry on top of the fucking cake?

“I’m _telling_ you the truth! I was minding my own fucking business, if anyone should be in chains here, it’s _you!”_

And then, as if to punctuate her point, she does something she really, really should have thought of before, and decides that the shackles are going to disappear. Poof, gone. Fading in the Fade. Oh, that’s going to make her laugh again. Bad, bad, shouldn’t laugh, bad.

Only…

Only they _don’t disappear_ , and her magic springs back at her like— like the string of a bow, let loose, still swaying with force. She hisses, and she snarls, and the women are saying something – _what,_ she doesn’t know – but it doesn’t matter, because the world is too much, too much, _too much_ , because her magic won’t work and the Fade has gone and fucking _broken itself_ or some _shit_ , because the bindings are still very much in existence and they’re starting to _chafe_ and—

Something hard hits the back of her head. Then, nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: u kno u should really actually try and finish fics you've started  
> me @ me: u kno u should really shut the fuck up and let me write my angsty aus
> 
> looking @ canon like luv i'm gonna fuck you up so much


	2. despised substance of divinest show

* * *

  _Before the host of the faithful and all of the Imperium,_  
_The servants of the Archon assembled a great dais at the feet of the Juggernauts_  
_And there built a pyre twice the height of a man,_  
_The Prophet in chains placed on a stake in the centre._  
(Canticle of Apotheosis, 2:3)

* * *

She wakes up between one moment and the next, like a finger’s been snapped by her ear and a spell has come undone. Which is— bullshit, honestly, because spells don’t fall apart that easily, she’s tried, but. But she’s waking up, and that’s _important,_ a fact underlined all in red ink and leaping out at her from the twisted little recesses of her brain like a light.

Her eyes don’t want to cooperate, and her skull is pounding something fierce. _Ouch, ouch, ouch, forgot that could happen, ouch—_ what happened to her fucking _head?_ It’s like loads of those little— little fucking rat things, _subterranean bunny-pigs,_ those, it’s like they’re all digging a bloody burrow behind her eyes. She grunts, groans, tries to blink away the pain but finds it only gets worse.

The cell is dark. The cell is dark, her toes are cold, and her hand still hurts, still flickers like lightning in a storm. Is it—? Is she going mad – madder, mad _der_ – or has it spread? Bigger, ripping and roaring, just as mean as the Fade, just as green. Is a demon going to crawl out of her, now? Is that where the two from before came from?

 _Gives a new meaning to ‘inner demons’, that,_ she thinks, and then she’s laughing again, rough and raw in the silence of the cell. Her throat hurts. Her throat _hurts_ , and she doesn’t know why.

The manacles on her wrists haven’t faded like they were supposed to, and she tries again, but her magic doesn’t function right, doesn’t answer her call like it’s supposed to, like it always has, and why not, why not, _why not why not why not—_

**_You’re awake._ **

She reels back so hard she gets whiplash, her pounding head whirling ‘til she feels sick. She’d thought she was alone. She’d _felt_ alone. _Stupid, stupid, you’re never alone in the Fade, not ever. Don’t forget, don’t forget, this is important, don’t you dare forget._

“Hello?” she croaks, her voice cracked and coarse with disuse. “What’s there?”

**_I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. Would you like me to try again?_ **

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, and ah, this: this makes sense. This is familiar, because it _doesn’t_ make sense, because things aren’t _supposed_ to make sense. Good. Good, she is settling herself.

Good.

“No, no—” Her throat is still all sticky and sore, and she clears it more out of instinct than intent, but the rumble of her muscles against each other like long-stilled stone _aches_ , so she stops. There’s enough pain already, winding around her like vines, like thorn bushes, pricking her skin bloody and broken and bruising and— and she would not like anymore. No sir, no thank you. “What— where are you?”

Sight is unpredictable in the Fade. She knows this, she knows it, she _does._ Never rely on your eyes, or your ears, or your nose. Rely on the way things _feel_ around you, the way the magic bends in places, but there’s no magic in this air, none at all, what has happened that the Fade has lost its _magic?_

**_Here, but not here. Waiting, waiting, waiting for a very long time. You’ll be alright, you know. The Fade will be alright too._ **

It’s weird, actually, now she thinks about it, how _personable_ the voice is. Most spirits don’t cleave to any one voice, any one gender, any one characteristic. Demons don’t even have the option, she doesn’t think, but demons don’t exactly like to sit and _chat,_ so she doesn’t—

Focus, focus. You have to pay attention sometimes.

“Well that’s— very fucking helpful. Except _not_ , what the _fuck_?”

A sigh. Soft, so soft, brushing her ears and back and brain. **_I’m sorry. I wish I could be more helpful, and I will, I promise, I’m coming, but—_**

The door slams open again, and through it walks the woman from before. Sharp, tall, dark in some places but not all— that scar on her face is so odd, she thinks. Why hasn’t she healed it?

The woman goes still for just a moment when she sees her. “You’re awake.”

She does not say this as the other voice had. Warm, soft with relief. There is nothing soft in this woman.

Silence, keep silent, do not communicate with the demons. If you can’t cut it down, keep it out. Keep it out. _Keep it out._

The woman is glaring, sharper now, like— like a naked blade, a sword in the hand, carving up, up, up, and—

And she’s moving. Hard, quick, she walks so _roughly_ , like she has stone stuck to her feet, stone tugging back her shoulders. Her hands are rough, too, catching on the shackles and pulling them off harshly, swiftly. A cursory movement; an easy one.

Relief, release, blood rushing back into her fingers but her palm still burns, what have they done to it, _what have they done to it?_

One breath, two.

Then: a replacement of rope. Softer, this time, more yielding to her arms, but still binding together wrists not meant to be bound. _Undo, undo, go up in flames, go away, do **something.**_

Nothing. The ropes still sit there, coarse against her raw skin. Fucking _bastards._

“We have to move,” says the woman, her words clipped and precise, half-bitten off by her teeth.

“What?” Her own voice is so much weaker, so much harsher; a sound like metal on stone sticks between her ears, drowning out whatever the woman says next.

Nothing can drown out the lurch of being forced to move, her knees buckling under her as her feet find the floor. She is so _heavy._ How is her body this fucking _heavy?_

The woman bites out a curse, her hand winding around her forearm so hard it bruises, heaving her back up. “Don’t try this with me. You will _move._ ”

Her body… doesn’t actually seem all that interested in listening, really.

It doesn’t remember how to _move like a fucking person_ until they’re outside, by which point her brain is a bit busy trying to cling to everything else. To the sky, the _sky,_ which is, yes, flayed open with livid greenness, but which has patches of blue and grey, too, floating far, far above her head like a bright abyss. It’s snowing.

The sky is blue, and it’s _snowing._

She laughs, full-bellied and warm, so hard that her legs shake and stumble under the weight of it, but she doesn’t even care if it hurts because it’s _snowing,_ the _sky_ is _snowing,_ and it’s cold and bright and _beautiful,_ so fucking _beautiful,_ she’s never seen anything so beautiful in all her days.

(A stretch of brown skin, laughter on her tongue, someone else’s breath in her mouth—)

“ _Stop_ that.”

Right. Right, yes. The woman doesn’t like it when she laughs. “I can’t,” she giggles all the same, because it’s _true._ Now it’s out, it won’t go back _in;_ she tries, but it’s like trying to force blood back into a wound. Impossible. Tragically, desperately, hopelessly impossible.

The woman makes a low sound of angry disgust, her fingers harsh and hard on the shoulder, so hot that they can be felt even through the padded fabric there. She heaves her forward, through the streets, where a crowd has gathered to watch them walk. Which is. You know. Weird.

Not weird? Is it just weird to her because she’s, well—

 “They have decided your guilt. They need it.”

_Guilt? Over what?_

And oh, oh, _oh—_ yes, she remembers it in flashes, the first joke, the one that had made her howl ‘til it felt like her teeth would fall out. Dead. People are dead.

That’s strange, again, because nothing dies in the Fade. Everything in the Fade is… immortal? Or undead? Or somewhere in-between, maybe? She never did quite figure it out.

The woman is still talking. “The people of Haven mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia, Head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for _peace_ between mages and templars.”

The dislike that blooms in her smothers the giggle before it can sneak out, but it's a close thing. The word _templar_ knocks about in her skull like _demon,_ and there is an anger here, tight and hard enough to claim the incredulous amusement dying in her belly. Is this the trick, then? Get her to hate until they can sneak past the cracks in her and just— take over?

Or are these demons just _bored_ and wanting to rouse some interest? Because, she has to say, this isn’t the _best_ way of doing that.

“It’s not going to _wo-ork,_ ” she half-sings, and the woman shoves her again.

“ _She_ brought their leaders together. Now, they are dead; because of you.” The woman’s voice has hardened like— like glass. Like something serrated and very breakable.

“I’ve already _told you,_ ” she snaps out, that hatred whispering at the back of her mind once more. Let them see. Let them all see; they are not the only ones who know how to be hard. There’s capacity enough in her for anger, if nothing else. “I didn’t _do anything._ ”

“You say that, but you are the one anomaly. You wear a face other than your own; Leliana thinks you are a demon.” Her voice curls nastily ‘round this last. Hatred, then. Hatred as fierce as her own.

“ _I’m_ not a fucking demon, _you_ are.”

The woman – what is her _name,_ honestly, there are too many women to just go around addressing her like this – makes a disgusted noise. “You are mad, then, as well as a criminal.”

Another shove, this one enough to send her sprawling into the snow. She lashes out with her bound hands, tries to catch herself, feels snow – cold, cold, cold, wet and soft and _real_ – on her skin, and then her entire palm is tearing itself apart, ripping and ravaging and— and— and _hurting,_ holy mother of _fuck._

When she can breathe again, she says, “what the shit was _that?_ ”

Fade-green and violent, this thing in her hand. Whatever it is, she needs it _gone;_ she thinks about willing it away, prays to the Maker that it’ll work, and hisses angrily when—

“You came through a rift with it.” The woman’s eye-level now, her knee rearing up into her line of sight. “Every time the Breach expands, it spreads. And it _is_ killing you.”

A chuckle, again, at that. Quicker this time, though; quieter. _Killing me, is it?_

“It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn’t much time.”

* * *

An elf and a dwarf walk into a rift. Or rather, _near_ a rift. And. Right. They don’t really _walk_ , either.

So. Fine.

An elf and a dwarf fight off a bunch of shades together near a rift, and there is _definitely_ a joke in there somewhere, if only she could fucking figure out how to _tell it._

That was a skill of hers, once, she thinks. Quick-tongued, quick-witted. Feet quicker but only slightly. She hears the clang of swords before her and thinks: _there should be laughter. Why is there not laughter?_

Stop. Think about that later, later, if you survive that long. Not now.

 _Now,_  she has a sword, a thing that sits heavily in her tired hands but that she knows to move as one would a limb, and this should mean that she is safer, this should mean that she is ready to fight. And she _is,_ she _is,_ she raises it in preparation, but the split in the sky above their heads makes her stutter, makes her pause, her muscles locking like she’s a statue.

It’s worse when she’s dragged over the hill, when the Breach in miniature is brought into her line of sight. The elf, the dwarf, several others, they just— they move underneath it. Not like it isn’t there, not quite, but like it isn’t such a force of— of— not nature, _never nature,_ but something _else._ Something that makes her nerves scream. Something that has her edging towards it, rather than into the fray like her companion – Cassandra, her name is Cassandra, _Cass-and-ra,_ a name confessed between one weary scuffle and another – has.

The Fade has a taste, you know. The Fade has a feeling. It’s hard to put into words, the lightning-like thing that settles behind her teeth as the demons rage and the rift fluctuates. She’d had nettle soup once, she thinks, though she doesn’t remember where (remembers a laugh and a hiss, a flash of _could’ve done better, Alist—_ and then nothing), and this is the closest comparison she can think of.

It sings in her, that rift. The demons, the elf, the dwarf and woman and all the souls struggling around her just… fade away. _Ha, **fade** away, that’s funny. Don’t laugh again, Cassandra doesn’t like it, don’t._

She’s dimly aware of a screech, of something – a lump with fucking teeth, it looks, from the corner of her eye – moving on her, but she doesn’t care, she _doesn’t._ None of it matters; not a single shade, a single line. Because her bones and blood are singing, and she can feel her magic tickling her awareness again, stronger now, brighter, like sunlight falling across her face, and she reaches out—

Her hand tears itself open again, _motherfucking **shit**_ — and her magic is fading, a cry caught behind her teeth _(don’t go please don’t go don’t leave me don’t don’t don’tdon’tdon’tdo—)_ , and the rift is just. Just. Just fucking _closing up,_ poof, stitching itself back together quickly and messily but— but _doing it_ , what the _fuck._

Doing it, and not taking her _with it._

The air crashes back together, and the Fade is gone, and _she is stood on the other side,_ out under a grey-blue-green sky, with breath in her lungs and ice in her heart.

_Huh. Well. Shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an update within a year of the last one ? incredible


	3. hell is empty. and all the devils are here

* * *

  _And I looked up and saw_  
_The seven gates of the Black City shatter,_  
_And darkness cloaked both realms._  
(Canticle of Exaltations, 1:9)

* * *

 The dwarf takes to calling her Spooky. She doesn’t— actually know why.

Better than ‘criminal’, though, which Cassandra seems remarkably fond of. She’s still glaring daggers at her like she’s done something very evil and very surprising. Which is, obviously, not brilliant, but she can’t exactly _do anything_ about it.

The elf is… better. Sort of. He keeps looking at her like she’s gotten naked, slathered herself in jam, and started to dance the Remigold, but it’s not like he’s actively trying to do her bodily harm. Which Cassandra – Seeker? The dwarf prefers this term, and she wonders abstractly what it means – doesn’t seem all that averse to, really.

That brings the number of people who don’t seem to be immediately planning her demise to a nice, even two.

One and a half, maybe, depending on how you look at it.

They stumble across more shades soon enough, and this time there’s no Fade-song to fuck up her brain, which is… good. Maybe.

What’s _definitely_ good is the feel of muscles straining under her skin again, the sword moving as an extension of herself – _think of it like— like a third arm, alright? No, **no,** not like **that,** Maker_ – and rending demons in two like it’s _nothing._ And it’s not as satisfying as the hum of her magic in her fingers might have been, but it— it feels good. Fighting. Fighting feels good.

She rams herself into a shade’s side and feels her shoulder bruise and bloom for the effort, and that’s not so bad, either, that alive-ness, that bright sensation that makes her entire arm shake.

The demon moves on her then, quick and smooth, arms held out in front of it like blades, and she rears forward, manages to catch one with the sharp edge of her weapon – thank _you,_ fuck off, see if you come at her again like that you _bastard_ – and aims a kick at it with a high, piercing laugh. This one is sharper in her mouth than the others. This one tastes like blood, like sweat and salt and _joy,_ and it screams in her until she’s half-deaf.

And she doesn’t even _care,_ because it’s _beautiful._

The shade’s other arm swipes out at her and she dodges it instinctively, raises the sword to lop off this second limb, blood hot in her veins, when a whistle fills the air and it’s felled (pretty anti-climactically, really) by a bolt.

The dwarf is grinning triumphantly. She kind of wants to hit him.

“I _had_ that.”

Hands raised in defence, he says, “easy, easy, don’t go biting my head off, Spooky.”

“We must keep moving.” Cassandra’s voice is a bark, an arrow rushing through a battlefield. Her eyes are narrowed; she doesn’t look particularly pleased with either of them.

Fine. Fair enough. _She’s_ not very pleased, either.

She spits blood into the snow as they move – when did she get hit? – and rolls her bruised shoulder, testing the muscles instinctively. She should heal it, probably. Her healing spells aren’t the best, though, she doesn’t think; even if she could fucking _work her magic properly,_ it wouldn’t make a difference. Does she even really want it to, anyway?

Things don’t bruise in the Fade, not really. Things don’t hurt like _this;_ they hurt deeper, harder, down to the very marrows of the soul. This is… older than that. Odder.

So. You know. Maybe she really _isn’t_ in the Fade anymore.

Either way, she’ll keep the bruises, thank you.

“You know,” the dwarf says, “your accent is the weirdest thing.”

“You know,” she retorts, “that’s a bit rude.”

The elf laughs, and the sound is so quick that she almost misses it.

“Hey, now, I’m not _trying_ to be rude, just wondering where you’re from.”

That’s… that’s a very good question. Why hadn’t she thought of that question? Stupid, stupid, _stupid._

“Because you sound like Kirkwall, kinda, under all that—” here he makes a vague gesture, “ _Ferelden._ ”

Ah. Those words… they’re supposed to mean something, she thinks. Indeed, they _almost_ do, a weird little niggling at the back of her head, and then—

“I’m going to choose to believe that’s a _good_ thing.”

“It’s a _great_ thing. Case in point: me.”

Cassandra makes a noise like a pissy cat. This seems to be the extent of her noises.

“So— not Kirkwall. Ostwick? Probably not Starkhaven, but maybe Wycome?” He pauses. When he talks next, there’s something teasing in his tone, and this is the exact moment she decides that of them all, she likes him best. “C’mon, Spooky, give me a hint.”

“I’m from the Fade.”

A pause.

“ _Bullshit._ ”

* * *

If the little rift from before had been a song, the Breach is a _scream,_ and it near enough lops off her head when she hears it. There are ghosts wandering around in front of her, hook-handed, but she can’t see, can’t _think,_ not with the Fade so close again, not with her mana building, blooming, a little spark in the back of her head tended and touched until it consumes her entire body.

“The Fade _bleeds_ into this place,” the elf says, and the words _no shit_ get lost somewhere on the way to her mouth. She can feel it on the back of her neck like sweat, but sharper somehow, her every hair rising to meet it. She can feel it in her mouth, between her teeth, cloying and coppery. Between her ears, on her skin, tickling the inside of her nose— it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere, and it’s _terrifying._

And yes, _yes_ , this— she stands before the Breach with power humming in her veins and thinks, _take me back, take me the fuck back, it’s so close I could just walk right fucking through it, **take me back** —_

She doesn’t walk through it. She drags something back from the other side instead.

Which would be. You know. Fine. It’d be alright, if it were anything but _a demon,_ and if the fucking Maker-damned mother _fucker_ weren’t right on a collision course with her, and if the entire _bloody_ ground weren’t _shaking_ with its steps.

She leaps, gathers the magic she can feel burning under her skin, and throws the biggest fucking fireball she can manage its way, following through with a swipe of her sword. It’s harder than she remembers it being – the fireball is too small, too small, she had imagined a roiling inferno, the likes of which would knock it to its feet, _why hasn’t it been knocked to its feet?_ – but she moves, she moves, she keeps moving. The beast lashes out with lightning that just barely skims her skin, a barrier not of her own making settling between her and it – she yelps a _thank you_ the elf’s way – and then she’s driving her sword into the demon’s leg and it _laughs._

It _laughs,_ which is obviously _brilliant_ for her ego.

A snarl on her tongue, she readies another fireball, knows almost instinctively not to try for the shocking tempest under her skin, and then promptly _loses it_ when the bastard knocks her off her feet.

Her backside bruises. She’s going to _kill that thing._

“We must strip its defences! Wear it down,” Cassandra roars between shield bashes.

“No fucking _shit,_ ” she says, and this time the words are loud enough that they rip at her throat.

Not that she actually knows _how_ to wear it down, because every blow seems to just make it stronger. She catches its feet with her blade and earns a shock that tickles her _bones_ for her trouble; she throws ice its way and watches it shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. Her mana is struggling, is screaming; even close to the Fade like this, it won’t cooperate like she’s used to, won’t bend and blossom in her as it always has. Eventually, she gives up and just starts throwing herself at the demon, sword ready, a war-cry clenched in her teeth.

She’s been knocked on her ass more times than she can count by the time that her hand spits viridian flame and she thinks, _ah. **Ah**. Right._

Touching the rift is worse, this time. Opening it had been one thing; fucking around with it like teasing the edges of a festering wound is quite another. Every time the _thing_ in her palm touches it, it’s all she can do not to let it drag her through. She wants it to _drag her through._

It doesn’t.

Touching it is like touching— like touching water lit by lightning, or getting hit around the head by a war hammer. It sings throughout her entire body, rushing down to her toes and curling ‘round the curved shells of her ears. It would be _so easy_ to let go, to let this consume her, _so fucking easy—_

The ground shakes as the demon crumples, knees hitting stone, and there are cries as the warriors around her rush it, and she clenches her teeth around the desperate longing that’s somehow managed to lurch up her trachea from her chest. Not yet, not yet, _not yet,_ she can let go soon but for now she has to fight, this is how it always goes, _for now she fights._

So fight she does.

Between bouts of hurling whatever _thing_ is clenched in her fist at the tear in the air above her head, she leaps at the pride demon with everything she’s got. Her blade drags its way up the underside of its belly the first time it crumples, the move so familiar, so utterly bred into her very bones, that she’s almost sick with it. With that in mind, she goes for its back the next time, pouncing onto its heaving blue shoulders with a cry that echoes down to her very marrows.

She loses her balance, finds purchase by grabbing the end of one of the dwarf’s bolts and heaving herself up, and then promptly buries her sword in the curve between the thing’s neck and shoulder. A moment of triumph, another slashing laugh lingering on her tongue, and then the fucking _bastard_ pulls itself up again and shakes her off— she’s flying—her head cracks against stone, _fucking shit,_ and the world is suddenly a lot… bigger. Ha. There’s two demons now. That’s a bit inconvenient. That’s— that’s probably bad…

She blinks and the woman – Cassandra, _Kass-sahn-dra,_ a clunky name in her clunky mouth – is before her, again, hands rough and hard on her body. It’s possible she slurs out something about _all you had to do was ask,_ but it’s equally possible that this is a figment of her imagination, so.

On her feet, then. The ground is so firm beneath them, ha. So strange. Like— like— like— stone. Or ice. Or. Or something equally unyielding.

“ _Do it!_ ” Close to her ear, too close, loud and sharp and _ouch._

“Wha—?”

“Whatever you did before, you _do it_!”

She does it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for any hits/bookmarks/kudos etc
> 
> this is ? a mess ? but then so is amell so like. it's fitting, no?


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